First Nations, French Canadians & Acadians

I’ve had this image (RPPC) of the Wedding of A. Laflamme for a little while now and I had a very difficult time identifying the couple in the picture. It should have been easy since a notation on the front gives the date of October 14th, 1913 – but it was not to be!

I first searched through the Centre Genealogique indexes for all the 1913 Laflamme marriages and found quite a few including several for October, but none for the 14th. They were close, but no cigar! Finally I took a look through original church registers and found this one in the St-Flavien registers:

Alphonse Laflamme, son of Joseph Laflamme and Emilie Lemieux married

Julia Monfette, daughter of Ernest Monfette and Eleonore Hamel

St-Flavien, Lotbiniere County, Quebec

Oct.14th, 1913

*

This marriage was listed in the BMS indexes (where I had originally looked), but with the incorrect date of Oct. 4th, 1913.Of course, I have no proof that the couple in the picture are Alphonse Laflamme & Julia Monfette – it is just the only Quebec Laflamme marriage that I found from that date.

Note Julia’s signature – Moffet! I have found a family of Moffettes living in St-Flavien at the time of the 1911 census. They are Eleonore Moffette (head of family, but not a widow), and offpspring Alphonse,Marie Anne, Julia,Emile, Wilfrid, Joseph, Rose Anne and Alma. They were born in Quebec and were farmers. Interestingly, I noticed while looking through the Moffets etc., that there were some double listings – Monfet/Moffet – which brings us back to the original BMS spelling.

The children in this photo are of special interest. My own grandchildren would not be still for a second. Didn’t people have to stand perfectly still for a couple of moments for this type of photography?

Laflamme is such a great name. It’s also interesting that Monfette seemed to change over to Moffet. A little easier, I suppose. It’s a great photo; it would be wonderful if someone recognized them as family members.

I love this kind of detective work. When I got my grandfather’s album, I sat down with my father and asked him to identify everyone he could. Then I sat down with his sisters and did the same. And because I had done extensive research, I was able to figure out who some of the others were (e.g. names of children in a photo with known parents).